Many people insist on earning a college degree to start a business. However, some successful entrepreneurs started their ventures while being at universities or just finishing their college.
Paul Orfalea set up Kinko’s in 1970 in a 100-square-foot space on the University of California Santa Barbara campus with a simple idea: provide college students with products and services they need at a competitive price. His idea of Kinko’s came after seeing a copy machine in the school library.
In 2000, FedEx bought Kinko’s for $ 2.4 billion in cash and changed the name to FedEx Office. There are over 1,800 FedEx Office locations all over the world.
Bill Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. The story of the Microsoft chairman is a legend. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard College in 1973. In 1975, the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU inspired Gates and Allen more to start their own computer software company.
The 2010 fiscal year came with $ 62.48 billion in net revenue.
Fred Smith is the founder and CEO of FedEx. He did not start business as a student, but the concept was born in a paper for an economic class. He outlined overnight delivery service in the information age. After finishing his post-college stint in the Marine Corps, he turned back to his idea and incorporated FedEx in 1971.
FedEx’s profit for fiscal 2011 is expected to total $ 1.63 billion.
In 1994, Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo who were Electrical Engineering graduate students at Stanford University. They collected favorite links and created a website named “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” which was later renamed “Yahoo!” (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle). The company went public in 1996, with whopping increase in the share price from $ 13 to $ 43 in a single day. In the next four years, the stock price peaked at $ 475 a share. In the fiscal year 2009, marketing services made up most of the total revenues.
At present, with more than 600 million unique visitors, Yahoo! remains a major presence on the Web.
Phil Knight, the co-founder and Chairman of Nike Inc., earned his M.B.A before setting up the company. During his time at school, he realized the potential of quality Japanese running shoes. After graduating, he got a deal to distribute Onitsuka Tiger sneakers in the United States.
The name Nike arrived in 1971.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin found it difficult to monetize the technology, but their choice of advertising business changed everything. Thanks to initiatives including the Google Display Network and AdWords, the company now generates big revenues from advertising.
Google was established by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were attending Stanford University as Ph.D. candidates.
Before the early 1980s, custom-built personal computers had not been directly sold to consumers. After that time, this was done by Michael Dell out of his University of Texas at Austin dorm room. In January 1984, Dell registered his company as “PC’s Limited”. His business sold between $ 50,000 and $ 80,000 in kits, upgraded PCs, and add-on components.
By 1988, going to public helped increase Dell’s market cap to $ 85 million from $ 1,000. The cap rocketed up to $ 26 billion only twenty-two years later.
Shawn Fanning created Napster, an online music peer-to-peer file sharing service, while he was attending Northeastern University in Boston in 1999. At its peak, the company served around 80 million registered users.
Related links:
3 Keys to Google Success
Capitalize Profits With Joint Ventures
Venture Capital – Nothing Ventured Means Nothing Gained
Economics is the study of our lives,our jobs, our homes, our families and the little decisions we face every day. Thus, I am keen on reading and studying economic issues.